Thurot, FRANÇOIS,

Thurot, FRANÇOIS, was born at Nuits in Côte d'Or, son of a petty innkeeper, 22d July 1726. He grew up a reckless and violent lad, and served on a privateer, but was captured and kept a year in Dover prison. He managed to seize a small boat, and crossed the Channel with a pair of sculls and his shirt as a sail. The Maréchal de Belle-Isle hearing of the exploit enabled him to study navigation, and Thurot, again joining a privateer, rose so rapidly that by 1748 he was able to fit out a merchant-ship. He next spent a few years in England, mostly in London, between music, mathematics, and dissipation, varied by smuggling and perhaps piracy; and in 1753 his ship was seized by the English. The outbreak of war recalled him to France. He was given the command of a squadron of two frigates and two sloops, with which he scoured the Channel, cruised along the east coast of England and Scotland, frightening terribly the townspeople of Banff (5th October 1757), and fought a brisk action with two English frigates at the mouth of the Forth. In October 1759 he again weighed from Dunkirk with a squadron consisting of four frigates, with 1200 soldiers under command of Flobert, and made his way to Lough Foyle, intending a descent on Londonderry. High gales made it impossible to enter, whereupon he crossed to Islay for supplies, and then sailed for Belfast Lough, intending to make a dash on Belfast. Flobert ruined the plan by insisting on attacking and taking Carrickfergus first (21st February 1760), but refused to move on Belfast. The delay had given time for three English frigates of Hawke's fleet to come up; and Thurot fought an hour and a half, till he was struck down, on which his ship hauled down her colours. See Prof. J. K. Laughton's Studies in Naval History (1887).